Task Autonomy for a Teleoperated Humanoid Robot Kensuke Harada 1,3 , Hitoshi Hasunuma 2 , Katsumi Nakashima 2 , Yoshihiro Kawai 1 and Hirohisa Hirukawa 1 1 Intelligent Systems Research Institute National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology(AIST), JAPAN. 2 Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd., JAPAN. 3 Computer Science Department, Stanford University, USA. Abstract. This paper discusses the teleoperation of a humanoid robot. We focus on the tasks of manipulating an object where the robot keeps balance by utilizing the contact between the hand and the environment. To realize this teleoperation task easily, we consider several automous functions such as balance keeping, avoidance of joint angle limit, and visual recognition. Some functions are implimented by using the artificial potential method. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by experiment. 1 Introduction Humanoid robots are expected to work in the environment structured for humans. Since it is almost impossible for a humanoid robot to perform all the tasks fully autonomously, some levels of human operation will be required for its controller. Fig.1 shows an example of the teleoperation task we have in mind. In this figure, a humanoid robot is handling an object placed on a table. If the object is far from the humanoid robot, the robot may not be able to perform the given task with simply standing on two legs. However, even for such cases, a humanoid robot may handle the target object if the humanoid robot can touch one of the hands with the environment. This is because, by contacting the hand with the environment, the area of the support polygon will increase and the robot can change the position of the CoG (Center of Gravity) freely. Based on this consideration, this paper focuses on the teleoperation of a humanoid robot where the humanoid robot maintains balance using the contact between the hand and the environment. A humanoid robot usually has more than 30 DOF and can perform various motions. However, since the DOF of the master device is usually smaller than that of the robot, it is impossible for a human operator to operate all DOF of the robot at the same time. Hence, when a human operator operates the humanoid robot, the controller of the robot has to realize two requirements conflicting each other, i.e., (1)the humanoid robot realizes the various motion, and (2)the human operator operates the robot without difficulty. When an operator operates the humanoid robot, he/she usually operates the robot very carefully not to break the robot. For the purpose of making the human operator to operate the robot easily, this paper considers implimenting several autonomous functions into the robot. After showing the related works in Section 2, we explain the setup of the ex- perimental system in Section 3. In Section 4, we explain autonomous functions; (1)